Day 6: Smeerenburg and Breibogen

Icebreaking in the High Arctic

With the ship’s engine repaired, we sailed to the far northwestern end of Svalbard. Here, we anchored in an area called Smeerenburg. Smeerenburg gave us our first taste of what the High Arctic had to offer: Monochromatic landscapes, bright blue glaciers, and dark water. We had excellent photographic opportunities in Smeerenburg today, but the real excitement among the expedition team was our plan to enter the pack ice later in the afternoon.

We started the day with a zodiac cruise around the glacier fjord. The photograph below showcases a ridge poking through the surface of the glacier. In Greenlandic, this is called a Nunatak and the word has similarly been adopted on Svalbard to refer to these formations.

After riding in the zodiacs pasts the glacier, we made our way toward a few seals that were spotted lounging on the beach around one of Smeerenburg’s islands. This was our closest and last seal encounter on the trip.

Other than seals though, our wildlife encounters were far from over.

Next, we headed to a black sand beach to photograph a herd of walruses. This time we landed on the beach, providing us our first opportunity to photograph walruses from land. When photographing in a large group, we were told to advance slowly in roughly 5-10 meter increments in one line. The purpose of this technique is to allow the walruses to grow comfortable with the people around them and not disturb their rest. We also were told to remain as silent as possible.

To me this photography experience is awkward because you basically have a line of 30+ photographers all taking virtually the same pictures moving forward on command. And most people just take the photos standing up with their camera pointed down at the walruses. In one of Brendan’s lectures early on in the trip, he told us how the best technique for wildlife photography is to get eye level with the animal, which typically means getting yourself very dirty and wet. I took this to heart. For example, the photo above of the seal was taken with me bent down over the zodiac with my camera hovering 2-3 inches above the water.

Similarly, for photographing these walruses, I didn’t want ten thousand photos of the walruses laying on the sand with the camera pointed down at them, so I headed to the edge of the line and stood in about a foot of water. I thought it would be cool to use the edge of the water as a leading line to the walrus and get very low to get some bokeh from the water and beach. Personally, I love this shot and it is my favorite walrus shot of the trip. In reward for my efforts, a wave splashed above the edge of my rubber boots. The rest of this zodiac outing turned out to be very cold and wet for my feet, to say the least.

As interesting as the walruses were (we got within 10 meters or so of them), I wouldn’t let it be the only thing I would photograph on this outing. My overall sense was that pretty much everyone would get the same wildlife photos on this trip, apart from maybe the birds. I wanted to find photos that I didn’t think others would take - Either because of (1) a fleeting moment (like yesterday); (2) practicing more careful observation of my surroundings by not letting the main attraction (like walruses or reindeer) grab 100% of my attention; (3) Working harder / willing to do more than anyone to get the shot. I think overall this strategy worked, but there were definitely times I was in “spray and pray” mode, whereas I could have relaxed and thought more carefully about I really wanted to shoot.

A great example of success with this strategy is the photo below. In this case, almost everyone was still photographing the walruses and this island stood directly behind the rest of the group. I also stood in about 18 inches of water (and got more water in my boots as a result) to get this shot on my Q2 Monochrom. I really like it as a minimalist landscape shot.

At this point, everyone was tired and cold, especially me with my boot full of freezing seawater. It would later take swapping 2-3 spare pairs to find a dry pair back on the ship! I remember one of the guides asked me “How did it get wet?” and I was just thinking… How do you think it got wet? This is the Arctic.

Anyways, we had lunch and the Polar Pioneer set its course further east. An important note about the geography and climate of Svalbard is that the west side of Svalbard first loses its sea ice, while the east side maintains its sea ice until much later in the season. This pattern results from the mountains of the island blocking the warmer air from the Gulf Stream, which flows southwest to northeast across the Atlantic. As a result, you may be all the way north on the west side but not encounter sea ice. But if you head east along the same latitude, you will eventually run in to a lot of sea ice, to the point it becomes very slow going even for a 1A class icebreaker. All this to say, the ship headed due east from Smeerenburg through a place called Breibogen.

Everyone gathered on the bow of the ship to watch us break through the sea ice. There are few travel experiences more fun than watching a ship icebreaking. The sound crunching against the side of the hull is awesome and you feel the power of the ship as the ice is pushed aside in all sorts of interesting patterns.

Soon, we exited the fjord and re-entered the open water. Many of us stayed at the bow until almost 2 AM, absolutely floored with the astounding beauty of the landscape, still water, and ice. Though most of the photographs shown here were taken a few hours earlier, the evening we spent on the bow on the open ocean was one of the most beautiful, peaceful evenings in my life. It drove home the scale of our natural world, and how the very sea ice we sailed through is the same that gets smaller every year as our planet’s climate warms.